Almost Over, Never Done: A Reluctant American's Pandemic Tragicomedy

By Amy A. DeCew

What starts with plague, ends in war, and begs to be banned by certain governors? This book!

 

She's just an ordinary freelancer on the search for the next big gig until a very small virus comes to town, turning her into a disabled medical refugee trapped behind enemy lines. Isolated, unemployed, and hunted by hate groups, she starts interviewing chairs and asking to be fingerprinted by the FBI. Then things really get difficult.

 

With nothing but frayed nerves and whatever is left in her bank account, she'll have to outrun fine print, arms dealers, and a toilet paper shortage of global proportions. With only maps, masks, and madcap plans left to save her from a country on the brink, can she outrun the self-described "wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth" to find a place she can survive?

 

Follow the alter egos, shattered hopes, and snarky comebacks of Amy, Amy, and some omniscient narrator who sounds suspiciously like Amy through two years that start with crazy and end in exhaustion as America melts down from the inside out. It's a memoir, international emigration guide, and pointed critique of fifty years of abysmal U.S. policymaking, all in one! Buy it for the one-liners, keep it for the tips on how to escape right-wing zombies.

 

Compared by readers to "a primal scream" and "like being in Douglas Adams' head in a pandemic", this eFestival of science, stand-up routines, and support for allied nations is bound to amuse, offend, and inform in a kaleidoscope of profanity-laced rants from the edge of the American dream. It's a one-of-a-kind mash-up of rage and rollercoaster laughs guaranteed to turn your stomach or tone your core, depending on your sense of humor and democracy.

 

Yes, brave readers, this book answers the question no one asked: If Fareed Zakaria, Amy Sedaris, and Hunter S. Thompson were trapped in a pandemic together, what would happen next? Gonzo journalism meets current events with comedic gusto, if you're bold enough to take the adventure.

 

Product information guide:

• approximately 226 pages, depending on your eFormat
• TV-MA audiences only
• may cause consternation in Americans

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amy A. DeCew
• Release date: Dec 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9798887592480

Book preview

PART 1

2020

ONE

SPRINGTIME, TAX TIME, PANDEMIC TIMES

What seems like a long time ago, in a galaxy we desperately wish was far away, sometime early in the simultaneously unremembered and searingly unforgettable year of 2020, our travesty explodes.

A respiratory virus half of Americans don’t believe in has swept the land. Healthcare has crumbled, jobs have been lost, and the carnage of politics continues to destroy all hope of sanity.

The scene opens on a sunny hamlet, inexplicably devoid of human activity. The camera draws closer to the emptied streets, the shuttered shops, the—no wait, that’s Europe where people believe in germ theory and have public healthcare, hang on…

Oh, yes, here we are…

Palm trees and fascist flags threaten to strangle a concrete bunker painted with what can only be described as a seashell bubblegum ballistic ballerina nuclear twilight hue. It will never make the DIY blogs as color of the year. The occupant, deep inside enemy territory and buried in the hallucinations of the nonexistent virus destroying her neurological and connective tissues, realizes all hope is lost.

Crawling on all fours, every under-oxygenated breath barely keeps her compromised heart squelching. This unacceptable heart—long ago twisted by some sick womb architect into birth defects few have imagined or indeed acknowledge—beats and retreats in sequence like ocean waves spiked with meth. Every movement costs her valuable oxygen molecules.

One eyebrow is gone. Pizza cheese sections of skin flutter off like fall foliage. She is the grey of the ceramic tile flooring now, a floor on which she has spent much time after being denied all testing and medical assistance. Her knowledgeable and compassionate country tells her she is not officially old enough to have problems with this fictitious virus.

But this one is less a fool than everyone takes her for and is long familiar with being denied. She carries a card that identifies the titanium-nickel-polyester mesh drinks coaster installed as the heart wall she so long lacked. It has been decades in the making for this one to achieve the shape of a nearly-mammalian heart. Oh, yes, she has been here before. What a familiar state of affairs for this poorly constructed example of a human to be sick, alone, rejected, and lectured by the people of systems deemed to be so superior. Indeed, she has been nowhere but this place.

As this road to absolutely fucking typical American nowhere is certain death, what will she leave behind? Has anyone ever known she was here? Do they know that what she lived was real and not worth living through? Does anyone feel the same way? What small success can she, or anyone else for that matter, steal before rigor mortis sets in? What scars can she leave on those who damaged her? After all, she has no interest in sainthood, and her kind of justice is not kind to those who believe no injustice was done. What signpost can she create for those left after who are willing to go beyond their usual assumptions and off of social media? Perhaps nothing. Her acrobatic choreography on poorly fastened tightropes as she dances above the circus of her long-irrelevant life has thus far amounted to nothing.

Or is there one last thing? She still has whatever shreds of herself she can cobble together. Whether it be rage or humor, she will meet oblivion hand-in-hand, shoulder-to-shoulder, librarian-to-smartass, in conversation with the only other patient in the ward. Always and still, herself.

She flips in sections like a haunted self-shuffling deck of cards toward a familiar rectangular object. She cannot recall the name of it, but she knows it creates and receives messages. With an undead life of their own, her roadkill crow claws stretch possessed and clacking, straining the blood vessels that remain hydraulically intact. Letting out a lung-shredding cackle yielding more phlegm volume than sound, she mutters to herself. And just keeps muttering.

The missive begins…

Interviewer Amy: So, Amy, how have you fared thus far in this remarkable demonstration of the utter failures of American healthcare, housing, school, and workplace policies for the past fifty years?

Respondent Amy: Well, since I'm a congenital cardiac patient with a bunch of Celiac genes currently undergoing an evaluation of why my intestinal system is staging a prolonged rebellion, I'm periodically microwaving my laptop to send signals into space for any passing alien ship to beam me up.

Interviewer Amy: Sounds like a smart strategy for managing a high-risk health profile during a pandemic. Is that type of outer orbit distancing challenging for you at all?

Respondent Amy: No, I'm just sitting here interviewing myself.

Interviewer Amy: It's great that you're using the time productively. What hobbies or activities have you been able to incorporate into your enormous amount of barely conscious free time?

Respondent Amy: I've found my background in the fashion industry to be very useful. I've converted my condo into a one-person factory and am negotiating with myself for an order of at least five hundred fabric face masks by Friday.

Interviewer Amy: What's it like managing that kind of workforce during a time when we're re-defining business in this country?

Respondent Amy: Exactly like being in college as an unpaid intern.

Interviewer Amy: Are you finding that you need to change your messaging to address customer concerns in a new way?

Respondent Amy: Since everyone in Florida mistakes me for a fifteen-year-old kid who picked the lock on her grandparents' empty condo, yes. I include my birth date with all orders, along with a note about how I remember when a certain presidential administration turned ketchup into a vegetable when I was in the public school system.

Interviewer Amy: Well, weren't those the good old days! Kind of makes me yearn to call out, I want my MTV. ¹

Respondent Amy: Kind of makes me want a guillotine.

Interviewer Amy: Oh, was that a good music video?

Respondent Amy: (double take) Uh...yeah...it was edgy.

Interviewer Amy: What else have you been up to in your sweatshop isolation ward?

Respondent Amy: You know, making bleach smoothies, mainlining laser beams, and quaffing snack packs of antimalarials. As one does.

Interviewer Amy: And have you seen the medical benefits of these presidential health recommendations?

Respondent Amy: Well, it turns out I now need a transplant of every major organ system and can only see in fuchsia, but I guess that's just down to how powerful COVID-19 can be.

Interviewer Amy: Oh, were you tested for it?

Respondent Amy: I'm not a celebrity, so I don't meet the testing guidelines. I'm just trying to focus on the best-case scenario, which is that because my landlord wouldn't work with me on my lease, and my medical care was seized one more time as an illegal asset for my economic class, I was traveling all over the country to wherever I could put a roof over my head and get an annual physical when everyone was coming back from the Lunar New Year celebrations.

Interviewer Amy: Nice hustle. Good for you. And has this smooth sailing with your cross-country move, medical needs, and complete work apocalypse really given you that special personal time to reflect on the essentials and move toward a new sense of meaning?

Respondent Amy: What kind of interview is this? I thought you were from the obituaries desk.

Interviewer Amy: And that's all we have time for today, but I look forward to our next endlessly insightful and utterly informative segment of Word Not on the Street, Masked Conversations. Thank you.

Respondent Amy: Dude, seriously?

On A Pandemic

and where

where ever is this promised light of day, this holy ground?

So long spoken of, never yet seen.

What added betrayal do you bring to me now

as you subtract my future from your schemes?

The men in suits and the men in boots—they all seem the same to me.

Just add painter’s mixing white

the same base, taken in its array.

Is it 1980? Is it 2010?

Same lies, same problems, same place, same men.

TWO

MASK FACTORY LOCKDOWN LOWDOWN

The annus horribilis of 2020 continues to devour the world with extra-spicy seasoning. Entire nations have nailed borders shut, making them islands again for the first time since three-masted ships raced around the world in an overconfident bid to shotput beige-colored steel-wielding germ torpedoes at each pebble even marginally sticking out of the water. Since the world’s first global maritime decahedrahydroxycathalon, the frequency and scale of pathogen-induced disasters have invented algorithms now uncontrollable in biological, chemical, and Silicon Valley systems.

In the face of such an enemy, the hairless bipeds upon whose shoulders much should rest seem uncomforted by their much vaunted yet debatably functional frontal lobes. Their lauded opposable thumbs seem to yield no results other than the ubiquitous and quizzical mockery of Search. And yet, have they found?

And thusly and so forth, back by virtually undetectable demand, we scour our familiar bunker to bring you the next episode of Word Not on the Street: Masked Conversations.

Interviewer Amy: So, Amy, now that we have every city, county, and state in various stages of lockdown or not, as the approximately seventeen million different yet simultaneous regional authorities may or may not have it, what are you up to these days?

Respondent Amy: Buying digital black-market passports to nations that may or may not actually exist.

Interviewer Amy: So, where will you be off to when recirculated air in a crowded metal tube hurtling through thousands of touchpoints in a day once again beckons?

Respondent Amy: There’s a small island off an archipelago somewhere in the South Pacific that has remained an independent nation throughout the ravages of colonialism. It was mapped but never conquered by a lost Spanish fleet that ran out of vitamin C. It’s called Sin Naranja.

Interviewer Amy: What a fascinating tidbit of history! How does one join the ranks of the citizenry?

Respondent Amy: Do you honestly think I’m taking you with me?

Interviewer Amy: What are some of the more notable facts about this country, and how do you think you’ll cope in your new home?

Respondent Amy: For an American citizen, you’re awfully interested in facts, and I’m of the impression that’s been declared unlawful here in the US now. I plan on being completely myself because everyone there weaves face masks out of sea kelp and sacrifices old MAD magazines to their Comedy Central gods while tending to lentil gardens and revolving around a calendar determined by pineapple festivals that honor fourth estate heroes and the world’s finest libraries. I have a rare birth defect in my bullshit tolerance pathways that identifies me genetically as a descendant of this tribe, so I figure I’m a shoo-in.

Interviewer Amy: So, when are you leaving?

Respondent Amy: TBA. I’m currently in negotiations.

Interviewer Amy: With the immigration authorities?

Respondent Amy: No, with my furniture.

Interviewer Amy: And that only makes sense. After all, it’s your household considerations that can sometimes matter most.

Respondent Amy: I even had to grant interview time. There’s been such an uproar.

Interviewer Amy: Um, this interview?

Respondent Amy: Let’s get this over with. Gimme the mic. I got a live one here.

Interviewer Amy: Oh, an interview within an interview! Truly revolutionary journalistic stuff!

Respondent Amy: I doubt that, and by the way, this thing is a flashlight, not a microphone.

Interviewer Amy: Okay, tallyho!

Respondent Amy: Check your social class, and don’t call me a ho.

Respondent-Amy-now-turned-into-another-interviewer-Amy: So, Chair, from what I understand, there are serious gripes amongst the household furniture about overtime violations during the pandemic?

Chair: Well, frankly, I’m sick of Amy’s butt. Her clinically pathological sewing of face masks means I’m being put through a whole lot of cheek clenching that is simply wearing my upholstery out. I’m going to need rehab—I’m sorry, refurb—when this is over.

Respondent-Amy-now-turned-into-another-interviewer-Amy: But surely you understand, during this pandemic, that PPE is in short supply, and even hospitals have been requesting fabric face masks out of sheer desperation. Some facilities are trying to stock up for the anticipated second and third waves of the season.

Chair: I’m scared she’s going to cannibalize my upholstery next! We’re all terrified—the sheets, the tea towels, even the futon! We’re not unionized workers, and we have no real representation in the face of increased demand due to manufacturing needs.

Respondent-Amy-turned-into-another-interviewer-Amy: Ah, so now you find yourself in the plight that millions of American workers—like Amy—have found themselves in for decades?

Chair: Listen, buzzkill, I thought this whole thing was supposed to be funny.

Respondent-Amy-turned-into-another-interviewer-Amy: Well, the comedy department has been busy making soup and homemade gluten-free bread, so I’ve been sent from the kitchen into the living room as a not-so-roving-reporter.

Chair: Some broadcasts should just never be aired.

Respondent-Amy-turned-into-another-interviewer-Amy: You just sit there all day, you talentless tuffet! Tell me, what exactly you’re contributing to our career apocalypse regeneration plans? Or our lockdown food chain needs? And don’t tell me that prank dialing food delivery apps fifty times for homemade stuffing recipes for sale was any big help. Back to you in our living room gym storage locker manufacturing hub dining facility, Amy.

Original Interviewer Amy: And thank you for that eye-opening view on what most of us are not, in fact, really thinking about during this global crisis, Amy.

Original Respondent but-once-did-a-chair-interview-that-never-went-viral Amy: Always happy to labor in obscurity for peanuts for the ultimate reward of yet another career being annihilated by the have’s who care not, Amy.

Original Interviewer Amy: I love your patriotism there, Amy. Nothing like an unusual risk-taker to make America great again.

Original Respondent but-once-did-an-interview-that-never-went-viral Amy: Please don’t make me kill you. I can skin you and use you for face masks.

Were We, Are We, Was There?

It’s always a list of who’s dead and how

I should be used to that by now.

A shape of common death with no common shaped response,

just an echo of a long shadow

where once the common acre lay

now galaxies unnamed fast-balling in uncalibrated gravities, stung by stars as the ricochet slices through too many decades of engineered decay.

Clackety-clack down the plastic hallway

blue-clad Charon doppelgangers ferry the departed in hasty mobile sarcophagi

All hail the miracle of the modern-day assembly-line

Brought to you by the genius of freedom as the savage airways smack their lips at venom stew

Bang through the door

As the body pod before

We’re not sure who lives here anymore

I know I just don’t want to

And I’ve been floating, lilting, gliding away in a fever dream far sunnier than the forever-damned skies you cursed me under.

I’ve been falling through every poorly plastered crack you pretended not to notice, sliding sideways through the holes you pretended not to see, hand on my eviction notice…

this house has many ceilings, but no floor.

So many flags all set a-waving. So many speeches, so little saving.

What feuding sky follows your nonexistent dawn provides so little daylight, and so many pawns.

On the chessboard as before, moved by arthritic hands in fractions of fractions that fracture the field into fences on fences, all refusing to yield.

The commons for commoners an uncommon thing.

And still you tell me Let freedom ring.

Smash goes the stretcher and crash goes the cart, and bash goes the landlord and laugh goes the art

Of running through your city streets, twisting